Aces Up
by endless-fever
Summary: "You played me, Doctor Lecter," Will says, the first thing since he sat down in his usual chair, facing the doctor. His tone is not accusing or angry. [Episode tag to Yakimono. AKA the fic that started to explain a flinch and grew into a minimonster.]


"You played me, Doctor Lecter," Will says, the first thing since he sat down in his usual chair, facing the doctor. His tone is not accusing or angry.

Hannibal inclines his head, the slight tip up of his chin the only sign he'll give of his curiosity. Will wouldn't recognize the micro-expression if Will hadn't spent months with him, and months thinking of him, going over every moment (straining for the moments his brain erased – no, scaled over, waiting for him to pull away the scales that still remain).

"In your kitchen," Will adds, stretching out what he wants to say, waiting for Hannibal to jump in at any moment, to admit what Will knows (one of the few things Will knows for sure at the moment is that Hannibal flinched intentionally). Of course, Hannibal does not. He is playing his cards close to his chest – always has been. Will must tell him he sees the ace of spades in his hand. "You flinched."

"How would me fearing for my life be 'playing you,' Will?" His voice is even, almost emotionless, though the phrase 'playing you' nearly sounds like it leaves a sour taste in his mouth. Too simple, too honest of an idiom. Not poetic enough for the good doctor.

Will smiles, slowly feeling his lips stretch across his teeth (his own smiles always feel strange, sad fabricated mirrors of other's expressions to Will). "You appealed to my sense of morality, Doctor Lecter." He waits a moment, smile melting from his face, but Hannibal remains silent – his trick for pulling words from Will had always worked in the past, when Will came in agitated (when Will was stupid enough to rely on Hannibal's advise, blinded to the truth) and he couldn't stand the silence outside because it only emphasized the noise in his head. Part of Will is still angry with himself for not pulling the trigger, not ending the life of the monster in front of him (for not saving Miriam the terror that is yet to come when she learns the truth). But, he must make the monster think Will sees his human form again. Hannibal _must_ believe Will sees him as a man again. Not a butcher, not The Ripper. Chilton, Will reminds himself to believe, was the real Ripper.

Hannibal, of course, remains silent, so Will pushes on. "You made me realize I was about to commit murder, Hannibal." Time to show that Will has as a pair of aces himself, to prove that Hannibal doesn't know everything about him, doesn't know how he will react to everything. "You saved me for making a serious mistake. And you did it on purpose. You knew flinching would cause me to think a moment and in that moment I realized there was one thing The Ripper couldn't make me, no matter what Chilton wished I would become. I have killed," his voice breaks slightly, thinking of Garret Jacob Hobbs always pulls a bit of Will's breath away and he _cannot_ appear anything but normal to Hannibal now, he can't risk it. "But I have never murdered someone in cold blood. Never killed someone _innocent_." Calling Hannibal innocent nearly makes Will choke on his words, but he must fight the urge, he must look sheepish, ashamed. Guilty.

Hannibal's eyebrows raise slightly at the mention of Chilton, at Will saying Chilton was The Ripper. He hasn't expected that from Will, but Hannibal must see that Will believes they were both set up.

"So now you believe Chilton to be the Chesapeake Ripper." Hannibal says it as a statement, but disbelief colors his words. Well, as much as any emotion colors his words.

Will rubs his hands on his pants (he misses his jeans, they feel better under his palms when he is nervous – and Will is nervous, but he uses it now, knowing he is nothing like himself if he isn't at least half afraid.), and sighs, then nods. He fixes his eyes on the floor by Hannibal's feet. Contrite. Ashamed. Will can make himself feel that, can imagine this is true, that Hannibal is as innocent as he is, that Chilton is The Ripper, than Hannibal is nothing but a pawn. Will can assume any point of view, he can assume, he _will_ assume this one. He swallows thickly, letting the guilt wash over him until his chest is tight and he struggles to breathe. There it is...He is horrified by what he did, what he almost did.

"This is a change from what you told Mr. Brown." Hannibal's voice holds no anger, no surprise. Not even a note of accusation. It is another statement that could be about the weather and not his own near murder.

Will flinches. He raises his eyes up to look at Hannibal once, eyes flitting over Hannibal's darker ones. Will swallows past a lump in his throat ('_I almost got him killed_' he tells himself). He scrubs at his face and the smoother cheeks under his fingertips doesn't feel any more right than his hair off his forehead does, but changing his appearance for the better can only distance himself from the sweaty unstable man that went into Baltimore State. "I was under _his_ influence then." He spits out 'his' with all the contempt he holds for The Ripper. "Chilton's influence." He clarifies, his voice cracking slightly on the dead man's name.

"That is not an apology."

Will huffs a short laugh that sounds scary, even to his own ears. It is the sound of a man that has been pushed to the brink of his sanity, a man that has spent months shouting his innocence to deaf ears, a man forced to question his own sanity and innocence in the silence that answered him. Will rises, unable to stay still a moment longer (he can move freely now, he is not stuck in a too small cell -he has to assure himself that more often than he cares to admit, even to himself) and paces the room, stopping by the ladder, running his fingers over the varnished wood – he can still feel the ridges under the clear coat. He turns to look back at Hannibal, but of course his eyes fall short of Hannibal's.

"Would you accept an apology? Would one be enough for what Matthew Brown did to you?" '_Alana Bloom wouldn't accept an apology, even now_,' Will thinks, but doesn't have the emotional energy to add that to this current mix of shame and anger coursing through him.

As Will sags against the ladder, Hannibal lets out a small sigh, a puff of air, really. He is disappointed. "Is that the point of an apology, Will? For it to be accepted?"

Will raises his eyes up, shakes his head with a sad smile on his lips. "No. It is to show remorse."

Hannibal nods his head slightly, his unspoken question heavy in the air.

"Many people have said I'm incapable of remorse, Doctor Lector." Will thinks back to the trial, to the words used to describe him. He had tried to tune the accusations out, to distance himself from the lies so he didn't scream and rave like a lunatic at the defense table (or worse, start to believe the lies said about him).

"Those accusations were made only seeing the portrait of you that The Ripper presented."

Will hums his agreement. "A work that he continued to paint inside my head for months." Will shudders and it is not faked, remembering all his days, hours, minutes spent in that cell, with his every move controlled and watched. Alone.

"Yes." There is approval in Hannibal's voice. "You are as much a victim of the Chesapeake Ripper as Miss Lass. Or all those unfortunate not to survive."

Silence. He cannot speak. Will's fingers flex and curl at his sides, as he studies the floor. He hears Hannibal rise to his feet, the leather of the chair creaking, but he keeps his eyes downcast, ashamed, _victimized_. Hannibal's expensive shoes come into his line of sight, and he doesn't flinch when Hannibal's fingers curl softly around his jaw (though part of him will always recoil at touch, even after he had been deprived of a gentle, human touch for so long), tilting his head up to look the older man in the eyes.

Hannibal is searching for something there and Will lets his pain and guilt and remorse show. Hannibal's fingers are warm on Will's jaw, a gentle pressure that doesn't let go even when Will has to struggle to maintain eye contact.

"Our old friendship has been burned by many words and actions, Will," Hannibal says, and when Will's mouth opens to speak, Hannibal silences him by continuing on. "You must not forget that I abandoned you too. I failed to catch your illness, or to see past the Ripper's design. I was presented with a portrait of you I failed to see through, much like you believed Chilton's portrait of me."

Finally, Hannibal lets go of him, but Will maintains eye contact. With the ladder at his back he is pinned where he is and he is unsure if this is a good or bad thing. Will curls his bottom lip over his teeth, bites down on it to feel something other than the pounding in his chest.

"Can a friendship be rebuilt over the ashes?" He asks, because that is what needs to happen.

"Perhaps," Hannibal says it easily enough, but the look in his eyes is not easy. "Or, something better, stronger, could be built in its place."

Hannibal pulls out an ace he had hidden up his sleeve. It is a move Will doesn't see coming. The older man presses his lips to Will's and Will knows he has no choice, no real desire, to do anything but kiss back.

Later, leaving Hannibal's office with his new neat hair askew and his heart still threatening to pound out his chest, Will thinks, half delirious and half anxious: 'Aces up.'

Time to see the other cards the good doctor holds in his hand.


End file.
